How is it the programmers fault anyways? Any fuckups were done in marketing and publishing, or at best localization. Localization isn't necessarily done by programmers, it's just translating strings.
If I'm sitting here working on a blitting routine to do translucent drop-down menus, what the hell would I care what country Kashmir belongs to?
It's not like programmers are writing:
switch(area) { case WEST_BANK; printf("Give the palestinians back their land you filthy zionist infidels!\n"); }
Ack.. XIII's copy protection was about the worst I've ever seen to date. Not bad enough that the CD had to be in the drive, it asked you to SWAP them all the damn time.
Please put in CD1. Please put in CD2. Please put in CD3.
For no reason other than the game didn't "trust me". I guess having an original CD1 wasn't enough "proof". Every level my machine would go "hey, if you realllllly own this game, prove it. Put in CD ummm 4!" The logic of this, I don't understand. Do they think I bought the game, kept CD1, then threw out the rest of the CDs to pirate them?
The only logical conclusion I could draw was, they wanted to make sure that there was wear and tear on all the game discs. Swapping 3 discs all the time makes it 3 times more likely the game will be ruined, and I'd have to buy another copy.
That shit got returned ASAP. Fuck EB's "we dont accept opened returns", I made them give me a refund. Shame for the publisher, I truly was looking forward to playing it, but the copy protection (even though it worked) absolutely destroyed any chance of the game being fun.
If iD was so enlightened, the original release would have no CD checks. They're absolutely pointless. Have me authenticate with a key, hell check the key online. Have an 1-800 number set up for offline people. Just like Windows XP activation. Maybe email the actual game.exe once you've authenticated.
It would be the most "complete" protection they could possibly ask for. Can't run softice on the operator at the other end of the phone.
To keep people happy, the process is anonymous. They collect no names or demographics. This would be a hard thing for publishers to accept, since in tough times all that "registration" data is good for a quick buck.
Oh wait, then THEY would incur the costs of their protection. They like systems where I pay the costs - upgrading to an "approved" drive, throwing out my *legitimately purchased* copies of Nero or Alcohol. Who the fuck are they to pretend their game is more legitimate than Alcohol? I burn 20 discs some days for clients.
If they're selling "circumvention tools" in America (over the web counts, IIRC), then they can expect a smack with the club. That russian kid who hacked e-readers did.
Ya know, I can't imagine there's anyone who's into PC games at all who doesn't know (or hasn't needed to use) gamecopyworld.com before, to download a crack for a game that won't play due to copy protection.
I remember calling the support line (hell, can't think of the game now) because it wouldn't run. Apparently their software protection didn't like my DVD-ROM drive. Their answer? Get rid of the DVD-ROM and buy an "approved" CD-ROM drive. This was in the days when a 4x DVD-ROM was a new thing and cost me almost 200 bucks.
I remember telling the guy step by step what I was doing. I told him I was downloading a crack, etc etc. He was getting all hysterical! He was wailing about what I was doing was illegal. We had a brief, pretty funny, exchange about that. I'd just read off my serial number and registered the game (hey, I had to to get support). He knew I had a legit copy. He was convinced it was illegal for me to play it w/o their copy protection. I remember him threatening he'd call the authorities. I hung up about then.
Of course, this was before the DMCA. I suppose now it would be illegal. You don't own your computer or anything on it. I guess the maker of any given piece of software I've installed can just take over my machine anytime he pleases. WinZip Inc can just go ahead and resell my CPU cycles to research projects, LavaSoft can hijack my printer and start dumping out full page ads. Just tack on a little encrypted pile of dogshit, and it'd be illegal for me to "reverse engineer" it.
I really wish linux was an alternative. It wont be. It'd be just as illegal to "reverse engineer" those games to run under WineX, would it not?
Anyways, people have been steadily running away from PC gaming at an increased pace. Game consoles today are powerful enough to give a good experience. It used to be my PC with Voodoo2 cards vs my SNES, there was no contest on which was more "powerful". Now the only graphical advantage my PC has over XBox or NGC or PS2 is higher resolutions. Next generation will end that, consoles will be able to natively pump out 1080i. I've even heard rumours of consoles with VGA-out so you can plug them into an old monitor. Hell, I can get a used 21" CRT for 50 bucks...and there's no "trickery" going on. You know if you put a PS2 disc in a PS2 it'll play.
It was just zealots out crusading for their favorite buzzword or brand. Like most such "technical" debates (ATi vs nVidia, intel vs AMD, Apple vs Whoever) it was carried out by people with no real understanding of the technology.
The "debate" typically sounded like this:
"RISC rocks man! I don't know why anyone wouldnt use it!"
"NAW man, you're crazy! CISC is teh SHIT! OH MAN I got this CISC chip and it can play MP3s! RISC can only do some things but not everything thats what the R means"
"Yer such a fuckin fag! CISC is gay! Only gays use CISC!!"
"Fuck you, yer the fag cuz only fags have RISC chips"
"Oh ya how come the DEC machine at school is so awesome and I can play quake on it? Can you play it on your 386? Cuz RISC ROCKS!"
"Fuck you quake is gay only fags play quake".....
You get the idea. Hop over to nvnews or rage3d and watch the fanboy debates rage over who has the greatest technology, nvidia or ati. It's funny, because none of the posters have any clues to the internals of either chip. How would they, it's all locked up as trade secrets. But, undaunted, they make brilliant comments like "ATI cards cant render shadows because they lack quadalphabileniar mapping support!"
Only a handful of geeks see the low-level shit anymore. Noone deals with registers. Everything is coded in a higher level language.
So do I really care what the CPU in this box is, or how textbook perfect its architecture is? It's pretty much irrelevant.
Like people who say "the G5 does more per clock tick than the Pentium 4". Good for it. But the clock ticks on my proc 3.06 billion times a second. Who cares so long as it "just works", isn't that the Apple motto? Sheesh.
You've never heard of Pepsi, RC Cola, supermarket branded colas, etc, etc?
They ALL "reverse engineered" Cokes recipe.
Coke and Pepsi dominate the market together through anti-competitive practices, like threatening to stop stocking stores that also sell third party products. Ain't no half price RC cola in the fridge at 7-11. They also have contracts with vending machine manufactures that stipulate that nobody but Coke or Pepsi can have backlit vending machines.
Coke is a great comparison to Apple. It's success all about brand recognition and sleazy tactics, and not about having a better product or pricing.
DRM is intended to protect artists from piracy. Not to protect Apple from competition.
Yeah, I'd blame Pioneer if a firmware upgrade stopped my DVD-RW drive from playing audio CDs. So what?
Is the future of music proprietary lock-in?
Will every consumer device have DRM that exists solely to make sure that the only legal source of content is the company that made the player? Cuz that sure looks like Apples vision of the future.
DRM, digital rights management. Whos rights does it manage? I was under the impression it was that of the content creators, the copyright holders. In essence, DRM is there to stop me from infringing on the artists copyrights.
But you're telling me that DRM exists for its own sake, to protect Apple from direct competition. Just like CSS on a DVD. It's to ensure complete control of the industry, not to protect actors salaries or hollywood.
If DRM is a mechanism to protect content creators, then I have no problem with it.
If it's nothing but a digital padlock to prevent competition, then fuck it.
Yeah, todays iPods play other formats. Of course, the iPod was launched in a world without iTunes. Tomorrows iPod wont, the way things are going.
Hell, watch for a discounted iPod that only plays iTunes DRM'ed content. Why not sell the hardware at a loss, and make a profit gouging consumers over the content, just like the console gaming industry?
The industry has had an open standard for a couple decades. 44.1khz 16 bit stereo PCM audio. This format was coupled with a plastic form factor about 5" in diameter, and we called them CDs.
And if I bought a CD from Sony music, it would work on a Phillips player, and vice-versa.
Now we embark on a brave new proprieraty, DRM-laden, locked down world. The music players of tomorrow will be more closely related to a game console than the LP players of yesteryear.
No more discussing your favorite music with friends. It'll be all about brand loyalty, just like the game console wars. A kid who only owns a PS2 will be more than happy to tell you how "gay" and "stupid" Halo is. In a decade, it'll be the same with music. A kid with an iPod will tell you how "gay" all the bands that Sony licenses are.
And I'm happy to say I can't wait for the whole corporatized entertainment "industry" to collapse on itself. The real winners here are the indy artists, who will continue to offer their music on un-encrypted plain jane CDs, or offer DRM-less to anyone who cares to listen.
Real campaigns for "choice," but what they really want to do is license their Harmony code so that they can get on the best-selling player and shore up their flagging store, which has fewer songs than the iTMS.
So what? Why shouldnt they be allowed to?
Why shouldn't I be allowed to open my own iTunes compatible store if I wanted? Maybe I just want to sell my own bands songs, and dont want the RIAA/Apple in the middle.
Why have indy bands released CDs? Because they want to have their music heard on the best-selling players. Whats the difference, besides some irrelevant "I hate real because I downloaded something in 1998 and blah blah blah" crap?
Not just Real, anyone should be able to market tunes for the iPod if they want. Just like anyone should be able to make 3rd party ink cartridges, and publish their own PS2 games.
Lets have 15 different proprietary "standards" out there for music. That way if you buy a player from Apple, you buy your music from Apple. If a song you like is only available on some other service, why you buy another player.
I don't care. I'm through with music. I wont buy any CDs or download any songs.
In my day, it was pretty decent. I could go buy a CD from any store I wanted, and it would work in any of my CD players. Before that was cassette tapes, before that 8-tracks and LPs.
But I don't care about todays kids. Go let yourself get screwed over by a bunch of corporate assholes. Tell yourselves that the company is some great benevolant force that truly cares about you, if that makes you feel better.
I could give a fuck if iTunes is completely incompatible with Real and every other music service. I could give two shits what kind of DRM Apple or Real or Napster or anyone else want to use. Who gives a shit if you're allowed to burn it to one CD, or only listen to the song on the third tuesday of every month.
Hey, do it to TV too. I don't care. When video-on-demand rolls out, make sure each service is compatible only with a suitably branded TV set or cable tuner. Sony Video-on-Demand only works with Sony sets, etc. Ruin TV. See if you can make a buck doing it.
Have your legions of Sony fans go around swearing and acting like idiots if Phillips starts trying to compete.
Not my problem, and I don't care.
The entire "entertainment" industry can jump up my ass. It bores me. I don't look to any corporate messiah for my entertainment anymore. Fuck em all, and fuck all their fans and zealots.
Ya sure? When you want to check out that huge open gap that was the 3rd floor of the underground parking garage, and the only access is a crevice that goes straight down about 40-50 feet?
There is no one magic bullet for that type of rescue work. The people doing it need a huge array of different things for different circumstances.
Yeah, Blythe was a merchant marine off to collect rubber plants or some such thing.
It wasnt just pirates or navy captains. It's just one of those codes that all sailors lived by, whether you were on a little fishing boat making day trips or a magnificent galleon travelling to the new world to fill its holds with Incan gold.
Hell, to a large degree it's true today. Get a bad reputation on one fishing boat, good luck getting a job on another one.
Pirates weren't really all that different from any other sailor. Hell, all they needed was permission from country A to steal from country B's ships, and they magically became "privateers".
During the revolution, there were tons of american "privateers" out to plunder and steal from British ships. All nice and legal according to the new congress.
"Secure Digital". Another of the umpteen million proprietary flash card formats. It's the same physical dimensions as an MMC card, and the two are usually interchangable. They are on my cell phone/pda, at least.
Noone's every adequately explained to me any differences between the two. Some people tell me "MMC is the best format" others say "SD is awesome!". They're just cheerleaders who don't even know what sport they're watching.
Anyhow, they're both obsolete because now we have XD cards. Products with X are inherently superior.
Anyone who can't see that a PDA and a laptop computer are two different devices, suited to two different tasks, probably isnt worth arguing with.
Coming up with anecdotes to prove that PDAs can be useful is a pointless excercise. The PDA market has exploded, obviously enough people out there can see the uses.
If Linus was the sitting president of the US, you would hate him and call him a liar and so on, and so on. People hate sitting politicians, because they provide a convenient scapegoat for all their problems. It really doesn't matter if they're "good" or "bad" or "dishonest" or "honest".
People hated Clinton, people hate Bush, people will hate Kerry too. The people hating will be the same people, for the most part. This really has nothing to do with ideologies or politics.
No other operating system seeks to. The comparison to Windows is ridiculous. No, Windows XP doesnt run on PDAs or 1024 cluster supercomputers. It's a desktop operating system. It was designed to suit a particular task and do it well.
Ever heard the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none?"
With the pirates, though, mutiny was rare, even if the captain was an evil malevolant tyrant. No matter what he did, mutiny was worse. Mutiny is the worst crime you can commit on the high seas.
Word got out that you took part in a mutiny, no matter what an asshole Captain Blythe was, you'd never serve on a ship again in your life. Hell, you'd be lucky to pay for passage on one.
In fact, many of the Bounty mutineers wound up living out their lives on some pacific island, partly because noone would go and pick them up.
Slashdot Mirror
How is it the programmers fault anyways? Any fuckups were done in marketing and publishing, or at best localization. Localization isn't necessarily done by programmers, it's just translating strings.
If I'm sitting here working on a blitting routine to do translucent drop-down menus, what the hell would I care what country Kashmir belongs to?
It's not like programmers are writing:
switch(area) { case WEST_BANK; printf("Give the palestinians back their land you filthy zionist infidels!\n"); }
Ack.. XIII's copy protection was about the worst I've ever seen to date. Not bad enough that the CD had to be in the drive, it asked you to SWAP them all the damn time.
Please put in CD1. Please put in CD2. Please put in CD3.
For no reason other than the game didn't "trust me". I guess having an original CD1 wasn't enough "proof". Every level my machine would go "hey, if you realllllly own this game, prove it. Put in CD ummm 4!" The logic of this, I don't understand. Do they think I bought the game, kept CD1, then threw out the rest of the CDs to pirate them?
The only logical conclusion I could draw was, they wanted to make sure that there was wear and tear on all the game discs. Swapping 3 discs all the time makes it 3 times more likely the game will be ruined, and I'd have to buy another copy.
That shit got returned ASAP. Fuck EB's "we dont accept opened returns", I made them give me a refund. Shame for the publisher, I truly was looking forward to playing it, but the copy protection (even though it worked) absolutely destroyed any chance of the game being fun.
If iD was so enlightened, the original release would have no CD checks. They're absolutely pointless. Have me authenticate with a key, hell check the key online. Have an 1-800 number set up for offline people. Just like Windows XP activation. Maybe email the actual game .exe once you've authenticated.
It would be the most "complete" protection they could possibly ask for. Can't run softice on the operator at the other end of the phone.
To keep people happy, the process is anonymous. They collect no names or demographics. This would be a hard thing for publishers to accept, since in tough times all that "registration" data is good for a quick buck.
Oh wait, then THEY would incur the costs of their protection. They like systems where I pay the costs - upgrading to an "approved" drive, throwing out my *legitimately purchased* copies of Nero or Alcohol. Who the fuck are they to pretend their game is more legitimate than Alcohol? I burn 20 discs some days for clients.
If they're selling "circumvention tools" in America (over the web counts, IIRC), then they can expect a smack with the club. That russian kid who hacked e-readers did.
Ya know, I can't imagine there's anyone who's into PC games at all who doesn't know (or hasn't needed to use) gamecopyworld.com before, to download a crack for a game that won't play due to copy protection.
..and there's no "trickery" going on. You know if you put a PS2 disc in a PS2 it'll play.
I remember calling the support line (hell, can't think of the game now) because it wouldn't run. Apparently their software protection didn't like my DVD-ROM drive. Their answer? Get rid of the DVD-ROM and buy an "approved" CD-ROM drive. This was in the days when a 4x DVD-ROM was a new thing and cost me almost 200 bucks.
I remember telling the guy step by step what I was doing. I told him I was downloading a crack, etc etc. He was getting all hysterical! He was wailing about what I was doing was illegal. We had a brief, pretty funny, exchange about that. I'd just read off my serial number and registered the game (hey, I had to to get support). He knew I had a legit copy. He was convinced it was illegal for me to play it w/o their copy protection. I remember him threatening he'd call the authorities. I hung up about then.
Of course, this was before the DMCA. I suppose now it would be illegal. You don't own your computer or anything on it. I guess the maker of any given piece of software I've installed can just take over my machine anytime he pleases. WinZip Inc can just go ahead and resell my CPU cycles to research projects, LavaSoft can hijack my printer and start dumping out full page ads. Just tack on a little encrypted pile of dogshit, and it'd be illegal for me to "reverse engineer" it.
I really wish linux was an alternative. It wont be. It'd be just as illegal to "reverse engineer" those games to run under WineX, would it not?
Anyways, people have been steadily running away from PC gaming at an increased pace. Game consoles today are powerful enough to give a good experience. It used to be my PC with Voodoo2 cards vs my SNES, there was no contest on which was more "powerful". Now the only graphical advantage my PC has over XBox or NGC or PS2 is higher resolutions. Next generation will end that, consoles will be able to natively pump out 1080i. I've even heard rumours of consoles with VGA-out so you can plug them into an old monitor. Hell, I can get a used 21" CRT for 50 bucks.
Does an institute of higher learning actually buy into this no-duh software patent?
Sad, I guess Universities are just like any other for-profit corporation these days.
The debate died because there never was a debate.
.. ...
It was just zealots out crusading for their favorite buzzword or brand. Like most such "technical" debates (ATi vs nVidia, intel vs AMD, Apple vs Whoever) it was carried out by people with no real understanding of the technology.
The "debate" typically sounded like this:
"RISC rocks man! I don't know why anyone wouldnt use it!"
"NAW man, you're crazy! CISC is teh SHIT! OH MAN I got this CISC chip and it can play MP3s! RISC can only do some things but not everything thats what the R means"
"Yer such a fuckin fag! CISC is gay! Only gays use CISC!!"
"Fuck you, yer the fag cuz only fags have RISC chips"
"Oh ya how come the DEC machine at school is so awesome and I can play quake on it? Can you play it on your 386? Cuz RISC ROCKS!"
"Fuck you quake is gay only fags play quake"
You get the idea. Hop over to nvnews or rage3d and watch the fanboy debates rage over who has the greatest technology, nvidia or ati. It's funny, because none of the posters have any clues to the internals of either chip. How would they, it's all locked up as trade secrets. But, undaunted, they make brilliant comments like "ATI cards cant render shadows because they lack quadalphabileniar mapping support!"
No, whats the difference?
Only a handful of geeks see the low-level shit anymore. Noone deals with registers. Everything is coded in a higher level language.
So do I really care what the CPU in this box is, or how textbook perfect its architecture is? It's pretty much irrelevant.
Like people who say "the G5 does more per clock tick than the Pentium 4". Good for it. But the clock ticks on my proc 3.06 billion times a second. Who cares so long as it "just works", isn't that the Apple motto? Sheesh.
Is that all the Mac is: a "niche" player?
Umm, yeah. They've been at about 2-4% market share for as long as I can remember. They sure as hell aren't mainstream players.
You've never heard of Pepsi, RC Cola, supermarket branded colas, etc, etc?
They ALL "reverse engineered" Cokes recipe.
Coke and Pepsi dominate the market together through anti-competitive practices, like threatening to stop stocking stores that also sell third party products. Ain't no half price RC cola in the fridge at 7-11. They also have contracts with vending machine manufactures that stipulate that nobody but Coke or Pepsi can have backlit vending machines.
Coke is a great comparison to Apple. It's success all about brand recognition and sleazy tactics, and not about having a better product or pricing.
DRM is intended to protect artists from piracy. Not to protect Apple from competition.
Yeah, I'd blame Pioneer if a firmware upgrade stopped my DVD-RW drive from playing audio CDs. So what?
Is the future of music proprietary lock-in?
Will every consumer device have DRM that exists solely to make sure that the only legal source of content is the company that made the player? Cuz that sure looks like Apples vision of the future.
Real was able to provide their DRM decoder in the iPod, I'm sure Virgin could do the same.
Could, technically, of course they could. Anyone who wanted to could sell their own DRMed content for the iPod. According to Apple, it's illegal.
See, DRM on the iPod isn't to protect artists from having their stuff stolen. It's to prevent competition in offering content for the iPod.
The only vendor of legally downloadable RIAA music for the iPod is Apple, and Apple wants to keep it that way.
Imagine your Sony CD player only played Sony CDs, to play any other commercially available music, it had to be bootlegged on a CD-R.
DRM, digital rights management. Whos rights does it manage? I was under the impression it was that of the content creators, the copyright holders. In essence, DRM is there to stop me from infringing on the artists copyrights.
But you're telling me that DRM exists for its own sake, to protect Apple from direct competition. Just like CSS on a DVD. It's to ensure complete control of the industry, not to protect actors salaries or hollywood.
So why can't I put DRM'ed content on?
If DRM is a mechanism to protect content creators, then I have no problem with it.
If it's nothing but a digital padlock to prevent competition, then fuck it.
Yeah, todays iPods play other formats. Of course, the iPod was launched in a world without iTunes. Tomorrows iPod wont, the way things are going.
Hell, watch for a discounted iPod that only plays iTunes DRM'ed content. Why not sell the hardware at a loss, and make a profit gouging consumers over the content, just like the console gaming industry?
The industry has had an open standard for a couple decades. 44.1khz 16 bit stereo PCM audio. This format was coupled with a plastic form factor about 5" in diameter, and we called them CDs.
And if I bought a CD from Sony music, it would work on a Phillips player, and vice-versa.
Now we embark on a brave new proprieraty, DRM-laden, locked down world. The music players of tomorrow will be more closely related to a game console than the LP players of yesteryear.
No more discussing your favorite music with friends. It'll be all about brand loyalty, just like the game console wars. A kid who only owns a PS2 will be more than happy to tell you how "gay" and "stupid" Halo is. In a decade, it'll be the same with music. A kid with an iPod will tell you how "gay" all the bands that Sony licenses are.
And I'm happy to say I can't wait for the whole corporatized entertainment "industry" to collapse on itself. The real winners here are the indy artists, who will continue to offer their music on un-encrypted plain jane CDs, or offer DRM-less to anyone who cares to listen.
Real campaigns for "choice," but what they really want to do is license their Harmony code so that they can get on the best-selling player and shore up their flagging store, which has fewer songs than the iTMS.
So what? Why shouldnt they be allowed to?
Why shouldn't I be allowed to open my own iTunes compatible store if I wanted? Maybe I just want to sell my own bands songs, and dont want the RIAA/Apple in the middle.
Why have indy bands released CDs? Because they want to have their music heard on the best-selling players. Whats the difference, besides some irrelevant "I hate real because I downloaded something in 1998 and blah blah blah" crap?
Not just Real, anyone should be able to market tunes for the iPod if they want. Just like anyone should be able to make 3rd party ink cartridges, and publish their own PS2 games.
Let the zealots win.
Lets have 15 different proprietary "standards" out there for music. That way if you buy a player from Apple, you buy your music from Apple. If a song you like is only available on some other service, why you buy another player.
I don't care. I'm through with music. I wont buy any CDs or download any songs.
In my day, it was pretty decent. I could go buy a CD from any store I wanted, and it would work in any of my CD players. Before that was cassette tapes, before that 8-tracks and LPs.
But I don't care about todays kids. Go let yourself get screwed over by a bunch of corporate assholes. Tell yourselves that the company is some great benevolant force that truly cares about you, if that makes you feel better.
I could give a fuck if iTunes is completely incompatible with Real and every other music service. I could give two shits what kind of DRM Apple or Real or Napster or anyone else want to use. Who gives a shit if you're allowed to burn it to one CD, or only listen to the song on the third tuesday of every month.
Hey, do it to TV too. I don't care. When video-on-demand rolls out, make sure each service is compatible only with a suitably branded TV set or cable tuner. Sony Video-on-Demand only works with Sony sets, etc. Ruin TV. See if you can make a buck doing it.
Have your legions of Sony fans go around swearing and acting like idiots if Phillips starts trying to compete.
Not my problem, and I don't care.
The entire "entertainment" industry can jump up my ass. It bores me. I don't look to any corporate messiah for my entertainment anymore. Fuck em all, and fuck all their fans and zealots.
Ya sure? When you want to check out that huge open gap that was the 3rd floor of the underground parking garage, and the only access is a crevice that goes straight down about 40-50 feet?
There is no one magic bullet for that type of rescue work. The people doing it need a huge array of different things for different circumstances.
Hell, they'd probably want one that swam too.
Sure, the military isnt investing millions into developing miniature unmanned aircraft that can do recon and surveillance inside buildings, etc..
No practical uses at all.
No chance that a device like this could one day find people trapped in collapsed buildings after an earthquake.
Better let Epson brass know, so they can order these guys to get back to work making shitty printers.
Yeah, Blythe was a merchant marine off to collect rubber plants or some such thing.
It wasnt just pirates or navy captains. It's just one of those codes that all sailors lived by, whether you were on a little fishing boat making day trips or a magnificent galleon travelling to the new world to fill its holds with Incan gold.
Hell, to a large degree it's true today. Get a bad reputation on one fishing boat, good luck getting a job on another one.
Pirates weren't really all that different from any other sailor. Hell, all they needed was permission from country A to steal from country B's ships, and they magically became "privateers".
During the revolution, there were tons of american "privateers" out to plunder and steal from British ships. All nice and legal according to the new congress.
"Secure Digital". Another of the umpteen million proprietary flash card formats. It's the same physical dimensions as an MMC card, and the two are usually interchangable. They are on my cell phone/pda, at least.
Noone's every adequately explained to me any differences between the two. Some people tell me "MMC is the best format" others say "SD is awesome!". They're just cheerleaders who don't even know what sport they're watching.
Anyhow, they're both obsolete because now we have XD cards. Products with X are inherently superior.
Anyone who can't see that a PDA and a laptop computer are two different devices, suited to two different tasks, probably isnt worth arguing with.
Coming up with anecdotes to prove that PDAs can be useful is a pointless excercise. The PDA market has exploded, obviously enough people out there can see the uses.
Yes they do.
If Linus was the sitting president of the US, you would hate him and call him a liar and so on, and so on. People hate sitting politicians, because they provide a convenient scapegoat for all their problems. It really doesn't matter if they're "good" or "bad" or "dishonest" or "honest".
People hated Clinton, people hate Bush, people will hate Kerry too. The people hating will be the same people, for the most part. This really has nothing to do with ideologies or politics.
No other operating system can claim to do that
No other operating system seeks to. The comparison to Windows is ridiculous. No, Windows XP doesnt run on PDAs or 1024 cluster supercomputers. It's a desktop operating system. It was designed to suit a particular task and do it well.
Ever heard the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none?"
With the pirates, though, mutiny was rare, even if the captain was an evil malevolant tyrant. No matter what he did, mutiny was worse. Mutiny is the worst crime you can commit on the high seas.
Word got out that you took part in a mutiny, no matter what an asshole Captain Blythe was, you'd never serve on a ship again in your life. Hell, you'd be lucky to pay for passage on one.
In fact, many of the Bounty mutineers wound up living out their lives on some pacific island, partly because noone would go and pick them up.